By Christiana Cefalu
Huge quantities of data are a blessing and a curse for many industries these days. Philanthropy is no exception. In a recent industry forecast “Philanthropy and the Social Economy: Blueprint 2013,” written by self-described “philanthropy wonk” Lucy Bernholz, all the big shifts she identifies in philanthropy are data-related. The way she sees it, “foundations, donors, and nonprofits are soon to be drinking from the ‘data firehose.’”
What exactly does this mean? For philanthropists, the challenge is rarely a shortage of causes to support, but finding the right organizations, while researching the collective wisdom within sectors and issues. Bernholz’s report highlights cases where “meaningful efforts at sharing philanthropic data” have emerged during this past year alone.
Consider IssueLab.org, a free online database of philanthropic research by organization, issue, and location. If a family or donor searched for “early childhood”, for example, the database turns up 521 resources. They range from the Center for American Progress on competing for school improvement funds to research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on preventing childhood obesity.
Lisa Philp, vice president for strategic philanthropy at the Foundation Center, and a former philanthropic advisor, says the site is “immediately accessible to anyone starting out” in the world of philanthropy. “As more data about issues becomes available, the more individual philanthropists can be collaborative and strategic in how they approach their giving,” says Philp.
Another example of the new resources pouring out of the data firehose is a story Penta recently covered: A YouTube library of interviews with major philanthropic leaders, culled together by The Bridgespan Group.
This front-end information – research and resources that are part of a giver’s due diligence – is clearly improving due to this unfolding “data firehose.” But back-end information, tools to measure a charitable program’s impact, is another area where vast collections of philanthropic data are reshaping the sector.
TRASI (Tools and Resources for Assessing Social Impact) is a searchable database of 150 different methods for measuring philanthropic impact, like the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s Donor Reception Report, which “helps community foundation leaders understand their donors’ perceptions of their organizations’ strengths and areas for improvement.”
Even experienced philanthropists should keep abreast of these resources at a time when philanthropic methods are changing. For individual donors and high net worth families, “the dream,” Philp says, is that they “can make use of this data and turn it into good information to make decisions about their giving.”